1 Esdras 5:53-55

Common English Bible

⁵³ They gave money to the stonemasons and the carpenters, along with daily meals. They gave gifts^[a] to the Sidonians and the Tyrians, to deliver cedar logs from Lebanon and ferry them in rafts to the harbor of Joppa, according to the written orders they had from Persia’s King Cyrus.

⁵⁴ In the second month of the second year,^[b] after they came to God’s temple in Jerusalem, Zerubbabel, Shealtiel’s son, and Jeshua, Jozadak’s son, made a new start, together with their associates and the levitical priests and all who had returned to Jerusalem from captivity. ⁵⁵ They then laid the foundation of God’s temple on the new moon of the second month in the second year of their arrival in Judea and Jerusalem.